The idea is that there is an internal integer `job_id` which is used internally by the database, but we want to reference it as much as possible with the human-readable String `job_name`

This consistently throws the following exception.

java.sql.SQLException: Java exception: ': java.lang.NullPointerException'.
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.SQLExceptionFactory40.getSQLException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.Util.newEmbedSQLException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.Util.javaException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.TransactionResourceImpl.wrapInSQLException(UnknownSource)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.TransactionResourceImpl.handleException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedConnection.handleException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.ConnectionChild.handleException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedPreparedStatement.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedPreparedStatement20.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedPreparedStatement30.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedPreparedStatement40.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.jdbc.Driver40.newEmbedPreparedStatement(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedConnection.prepareStatement(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.derby.impl.jdbc.EmbedConnection.prepareStatement(Unknown Source)
at [line 3 of snippet above]

As you can see, this is thrown from the line where the prepared statement is created - it doesn't get as far as executing it. I had assumed I was doing something wrong, but a few people over at Stack Overflow ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3503710/derby-insert-select-null-pointer-exception ) reckon that this is a bug, at least in terms of what error is being reported. For what it's worth, the exact same code works fine with PostgreSQL.